ANOTHER FRAUD: You may also receive an email or other solicitation from various websites or business enterprises which will tell you that for a sum of money they will send you an “Authentic” Coat-of-Arms for your family name. In some instances this may be true (some people really are related to William the Conqueror), but in the case of the Van Wagenen families (by any spelling), it too is a fraud. The Van Wagenen family came to America from Holland because they had nothing to lose and everything to gain. They were for the most part very poor and certainly had no royal blood coursing through their veins. As a matter of fact, our Netherlands ancestors didn’t even have a last name. It was not until thirty years after they arrived in America (about 1660), that they adopted the name of “Wageningen” after the town in Holland from which they had immigrated. And a number of years after that before they added the “Van” which in old-Dutch meant “of” or “from”, hence: Carl of Wageningen (or) Carl Van Wagenen.

Tags: ge, Genealogy Fraud